A short and compact white paper on the essences of decision-making: How can you use professional intuition and "Nichtwissen" (read the paper to learn more about this term...) for an effective culture of decision-making?

1. The Essences of
Decision-Making
Intuition, „Nichtwissen“ and Decision-Making
DR. ANDREAS ZEUCH
cell +49.(0)160.79 38 807 | email: az@a-zeuch.de | web: www.a-zeuch.de |
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2. The Essences of Decision-Making
‣ You can not not decide: Every single perception,
thinking and acting is a decision.
‣ To look in one direction means to exclude other visual data.
‣ To think one thought means to exclude another one.
‣ To act in one way means to exclude another action.
‣ You can dissolve this exclusion only in time: One by one.
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009

3. The Nature of Decisions
‣ Every decision is made by rationality and intuition.
‣ There is no pure rationality nor intuition. You can
imagine these opposite poles as a throttle: It‘s
possible to scroll your style of decision-making in
either one or the other direction. But you will never
reach the final points.
Intuition
Rationality
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009

4. Incomplete Information: Basics
‣ Most decisions have to be made on the basis of
incomplete information.
‣ Especially in complex systems there is no such thing
like complete information.
‣ Paradoxically, the lack of information regarding to the
relevant data you would like to obtain will grow in
knowledge-society.
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009

5. Incomplete Information: Less is more
‣ The quality of decision-making is unproportional to the
amount of gathered information
‣ The ratio of amount of gathered information and
quality of decision-making is a bell-shaped curve: Up
to a certain point it will increase then decrease.
+
Quality of Decision
- +
Amount of Informationen
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009

6. Consequences I: Professional Intuition
‣ Therefore and because of the following aspects it‘s no
luxury but necessity to develop the professional intuition of
your employees.
‣ Intuition is a basic function of every human being. It‘s
rooted in implicit knowledge, subliminal perception and
information processing and mirror neurons.
‣ But: Intuition is ressource and risk!
‣ Experience and perception can lead to errors (e.g. Anchor-Heuristic)
‣ Judgements can be distorted by the „Halo- and Devil-Effect“:
Deducing an overall assessment from one single attribute.
‣ For this reasons it‘s important to learn to distinct between functional
and dysfunctional intuition
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009

7. The Meaning of the Term „Nichtwissen“
Nichtwissen is the German term for quot;absence of
knowledgequot;, including conscious and unconscious
aspects of not-knowing. In contrary to ignorance it does
not automatically feature not wanting to know, which
could be seen as a special subtype of quot;Nichtwissenquot;.
Errors and misconceptions are other contributing
subtypes of quot;Nichtwissenquot;.
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009

8. Consequences II: Constructive Culture of
Nichtwissen
‣ It‘s important to develop a constructive culture of
„Nichtwissen“
‣ Because of the growing daily lack of information.
‣ Because every knowledge produces new Nichtwissen.
Remember your time at the university: After having written
your thesis you know, what you‘re not knowing (Important
distinction: conscious and unconscious Nichtwissen!)
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009

9. Consequences II: Constructive Culture of
Nichtwissen
‣ Nichtwissen is not a problem only. It‘s a deep ressource for
creativity and innovation, too.
‣ Become „Open Experts“: Work hard on your expertise and respect it
but stay flexible to look with beginner‘s eyes on your questions,
problems and challenges.
‣ Respect the question. Every good answer is rooted in a better
question!
‣ Anchor intelligent methods of communication like Dialogue-Rounds,
Open Space as regular and permanent learning cycles in your
organization.
‣ Learn from your errors. There is no error-free organization (even if
Fredmund Malik demands it...). Errors will happen. They‘re not
intended. Otherwise it would be sabotage.
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009

10. Consequences III: The organizational
model
‣ Every hierarchical, central command-and-control
Organization will kill the intuition of its employees. There is
no space for a constructive culture of Nichtwissen.
‣ To create an ideal context for the described necessary
decision-making culture the Beyond-Budgeting model is a
great choice.
‣ And on the other side: Beyond-Budgeting claims intuitive
employees and leaders, and a constructive culture of
Nichtwissen.
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009

11. Learn more:
http://www.a-zeuch.de/index.php?l=en
© ANDREAS ZEUCH 2009